


For Want of A Lich Queen

by Triskaideka



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Crack, Fantastic Racism, Gen, LLF Comment Project, Love is in the Air, Pre-Wrath of the Lich King, Valentine's Day 2019, in which Kel'Thuzad is a reprehensibly racist and misogynistic dickbag, references to the old Jaina/Thrall rumors, the Scourge has never had an original idea in its entire existence and recycles plots, unrequited Arthas Menethil/Jaina Proudmoore (background)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-13 19:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17493872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triskaideka/pseuds/Triskaideka
Summary: While Arthas and Ner'zhul are busy duking it out for possession of the former's body, the ever faithful Kel'Thuzad holds down the fort... er, necropolis and works to carry out even his master's most puzzling commands.





	For Want of A Lich Queen

**Author's Note:**

> If you're familiar with the Unliving Choker drop and quest chain starting from "An Invitation, of Sorts..." in Zul'Drak, this deliberately invokes the same plots.
> 
> Otherwise inspired by a conversation with Inksinger. We all know who to blame! ;D

This new acolyte was sharp—for a troll, Kel’Thuzad reflected, but his incessant questions had a tendency to get in the way of the day-to-day production of Scourge-blight and upholding the master’s commands. And, as the spring equinox was mere weeks away, his most onerous duties had come around once again. Although…

“What be on the schedule today, lich-mon?”

Kel’Thuzad turned dramatically, the tassel-like bits on his kilt fluttering. He did so love having an appreciative audience. “Today, my acolyte…”

He stopped dead in his tracks as a brilliant idea occurred to him. It would allow him to kill two birds with one stone, so why not?

“Today I have a special errand for you.”

Drakuru’s eyes went wide with first disbelief, then suspicion as Kel’Thuzad explained his plan. But the master’s will was not to be questioned, and the master had had prescient knowledge of his future so that when his avatar completed the prophesied union and they became one, some of his more questionable orders had become clear. Like this one.

It was already clear that the target had questionable taste in jewelry, given the number of years Kel’Thuzad had already spent sending these little lovelorn gifts in his master’s name to her, so perhaps one of those inhuman types who believed the lies the Horde spewed would do better. Salacious rumors had long since reached his ears that the object of his king’s affections had transferred her own to a terrorist greenskin. Never mind Kel’Thuzad’s earlier wishful thinking that he could turn her when they met at Andorhal; she had proven her morals far more unassailable than the boy’s then and afterwards.

His other projects, concoctions and arcane experiments all, weren’t yet ready so the archlich of Naxxramas settled in to wait for something interesting to happen.

 

* * *

 

Drakuru returned, having successfully passed himself off as a Horde-sworn troll within the Undercity—apparently they looked as closely at their allies as humans, which was to say not at all—and he brought with him some sort of troll-inspired headdress. And it was _hideous_. Kel’Thuzad expected that if he’d still been among the living, it would have melted his eyeballs right out of their sockets. Did trolls sell such gaudy awfulness to tourists and then snigger behind their customers’ backs about their bad taste?

“Are you sure this is the sort of thing your kind would gift to woo a female?” he asked skeptically.

“If I be lyin’, may the master strike me down.”

Kel’Thuzad tapped thoughtfully at his teeth with one ossein finger. Surviving the master’s displeasure at his failure in this area loomed threateningly in his future. While he had conquered death itself, a lich needing too many resurrections gave his underlings little reason to fear him.

“Very well,” he said at last. He did not fail to see Drakuru surreptitiously take a relieved breath while he inspected the headdress for the best place to hide the death enchantment.

“You said you been givin’ these gifts in the master’s name to this woman for almost a decade?” Drakuru asked offhandedly.

Kel’Thuzad grunted an assent. Curiosity should have been the chit’s downfall if the number of books she’d devoured in the libraries were any indicator. And yet….

The enchantment fell into place, the sickly glow fading from visibility as the best charms Kel’Thuzad could muster concealed it from magical inquiry as much as visual.

“So how ya sendin' it to her? Pay a courier?” Drakuru went on.

“Don't spout nonsense,” Kel'Thuzad told him tartly. “I teleport it to the guard house outside her little city in the marsh. She warded her bedroom against such intrusions after the first year.”

At this, Drakuru nodded as if it were the most sensible thing he'd heard this week, though privately Kel'Thuzad had his doubts about how deeply the troll understood any self-evident logic.

 

* * *

 

“My lady?” Aegwynn called from outside Jaina’s sanctum.

Jaina jerked in surprise, pulled out of the intensely fascinating monograph regarding the fourteen day gestational cycle of the fel wyrm and its impact on the tenderness of the resulting meat put out by the Azeroth Council for Food Purity, and blinked owlishly to return herself to the world outside her head. She glanced out the tiny paned windows so reminiscent of home to estimate how long she’d been lost in the seamy underworld of food safety.

“Come in?” she called.

Aegwynn poked her head in, glancing around the tome-and-scroll stuffed little room as if she honestly thought Jaina would entertain guests without the former Guardian at her side to give counsel. Having satisfied herself on whatever she was looking for, the majordomo entered the room proper and pulled out a wrapped package in a style Jaina recognized. Unfortunately.

She glanced at her desk calendar to confirm the date and swallowed back a sigh. This year she’d forgotten, while also sort of hoping the sender had at last given up. “Still? They’re still sending me these tasteless prank gifts for Love is in the Air?”

“Afraid so, my lady,” Aegwynn said, gingerly placing the bulky thing on the least comfortable chair in the room. They both regarded its gaudy Winter Veil wrapping paper, three months out of date and, as always, ripped and repaired in odd places on top of the images having been rubbed off in either storage or transit; Jaina could never decide which sounded worse.

“It’s bigger this year,” Jaina observed, full of reluctance to touch the thing. Some level of disgusted curiosity kept her from simply incinerating the unwanted yearly arrival whenever she first put eyes on it. “What do you think it might be this time? Have we graduated from necklaces?”

Aegwynn’s stare turned a hair more piercing as she inclined her head ambiguously in Jaina’s direction. “Was it necklaces every year prior to this?”

“It was,” Jaina said grimly.

“No one’s ever come forward with a ‘gotcha’ message?”

“Nope.”

“And tracing spells to find the origin of the necklaces…?”

“Blocked. Whoever sends it is at least conversant with Dalaran’s methodology. But, given my history…” Jaina trailed off, not wanting to invoke the memories of Arthas and Kael’thas both trying to woo her in their inexpert ways—and how disastrously each of those attempts had turned out in light of their later actions.

Aegwynn gave a quick nod of understanding with her lips pursed. “Perhaps this year there’ll be a calling card or the like.”

It was Jaina’s turn to bob her head with no intention of actually touching the Light-blasted thing.

“Would you like me to…?” Aegwynn asked.

“Oh, would you be willing? It’s—I could, obviously, I just don’t…really want to.”

“For you, my lady, I would do quite a lot.” Aegwynn always professed her loyalty in enigmatic statements like that. Without waiting for a direct order from Jaina, she reached for the wrapping. No explosion rocked Jaina’s tower, though confirming that either or both of them had fast enough reflexes to prevent tragedy in that instance was further than Jaina wanted to go. The wrapping ripped off easily enough as Aegwynn gestured and invisible arcane blades cut through the twine.

They both blinked in bafflement at what lay inside.

“It’s…hideous,” Jaina said in an awed whisper.

Aegwynn nodded vigorously.

“Is that, uh, troll work you think?” Jaina went on.

“Looks that way,” Aegwynn said softly.

“So my secret admirer is a _troll?”_ Jaina said. It made some sense in conjunction with the other horribly gaudy things she’d been sent in years past. Troll aesthetics were often at odds with those of humans.

“Maybe…” Aegwynn. Her doubt reinfected Jaina.

“You’re thinking it’s a dodge?”

“It could be almost anything: a taunt, a threat, a confession, some sort of progression that only makes sense in the sender’s head. The escalation of a prank for pure amusement on the other party’s end. Anything.”

Well, Aegwynn was the one with hundreds of years of experience under her belt.

“What do you do with the presents each year?” Aegwynn asked abruptly. There was an edge of fear in her voice that Jaina didn’t like.

“Uh, I’ve always thrown them in the sea unworn. It’s a Kul Tiran custom that you give unwanted items to the sea gods so they don’t go to waste.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“Aegwynn, what are you thinking?”

“Not thinking. Sensing. Do you not—? Of course you don’t, or you wouldn’t consider having this thing near you for another instant. Jaina, look.” She hunkered down and pointed up inside the weird headdress…thing, in a shadowed corner roughly where it would sit against a human wearer’s scalp. Jaina summoned a magelight as she followed suit and peered into the underside of her gift.

In all honesty, it looked like the inside of a war helm made sometime in the ancient past before modern smelting and molding techniques came about.

“…I don’t see anything out of the ordinary?” Jaina said.

Aegwynn muttered a curse on the Kirin Tor’s teaching methods that impressed even Jaina, as the daughter of a nation of sailors. “You’re not meant to see it and if not for some ‘adventures’ that I’d rather never relive, I might not have seen it in time either. Whoever enchanted this helm has the kind of skill and imagination that half of Dalaran would be thirsting after if they weren’t so adamantly set against necromancy.”

“Necromancy?!” Jaina breathed.

She was given no time for the indulgence of feelings. “Death enchantment. I’d wager that it was hidden somewhere on each and every item you received, in hopes that you’d slip it on without thinking too hard on the possible consequences and then, bam!, instant resurrection with the whole ‘your will is not your own’ part and parcel with it.”

“Arthas…” Jaina said quietly and all of the heartache and loneliness for his presence in her life seemed to imbue itself into his name.

“Yes, Jaina: Arthas,” Aegwynn said, her voice harsh. She never called Jaina by her name unless it was as dire as it could get. “Pay attention now. He’s been sending you these little love-tokens for years. That means—well, one of two things: either he’s active out there somewhere in the world and trying to make contact with you, or he left instructions for someone else to do what he would have done in his stead. And do you know what that means?”

“No, what?” Jaina said dully. Some part of the back of her mind was now unceasingly wailing Arthas’ name without need for breath. Deafened and numbed, she gave a moment’s true consideration to just putting the cursed thing on her head in hopes of speaking to him one more time.

“It means that those undead armies that marched on your homeland are still out there, probably gathering their strength. You can meet them, strength to strength. You can call on your allies: Varian and his Council of Nobles, your orcish friend to the north. The Kirin Tor. You’re a hero multiple times over in their eyes and they would certainly appreciate a little timely forewarning of what’s about to come crashing down on their heads, don’t you think?”

This was why she had agreed to take Aegwynn on as her advisor.

When she lifted her head to meet Aegwynn’s gaze, Jaina thought there was a good chance her eyes held a feral light. “I can think of quite a few people who’d want to get revenge on the Scourge,” she said.

“Revenge on the Scourge is all well and good,” Aegwynn said, “but I think you’re forgetting about the actual item at the source of your problem right now.” She nodded in the direction of the _thing_ on the chair.

“Oh,” Jaina said loftily. “I’m sure we can melt it down. I do have a goldsmith on staff if you’d rather not mix magics.”

**Author's Note:**

> Addendum, 6/2/19: This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> This author replies to comments. Readers who would prefer not to receive a reply to comments, please state something like "no reply necessary" and I'll just stare with heart eyes at my inbox.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Lady Was Lost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17641133) by [Gebuskrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gebuskrost/pseuds/Gebuskrost)




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